payment page
The son of Hans and Rosa Hubermann, Hans Junior is a true manifestation of German nationalism and the hate and division bred and bolstered by Hitler’s rhetoric. He is proud, disciplined, and utterly convinced that his allegiance to the Führer and disdain for the Jewish population is right and justified. He is outspoken and antagonistic in this belief. A proud member of the Nazi Party, Hans Junior is in every way the opposite of his father. His conditioning is so thorough that he believes his father is part of an old, decrepit Germany, a country that allowed the suffering of its own people while it offered opportunity and prosperity to the foreign “other.” The shame Hans Junior feels toward his father runs deep, and he is vocal about what he considers to be his father’s failures and shortcomings. One example is his father’s painting over slurs scrawled over the exteriors of Jewish homes and businesses. It is Hans Junior’s view that his father’s behavior has made him utterly unappealing to the Nazi Party and this ostracization casts shame on his family, and Germany as a whole. Hans Junior believes his father to be a coward, and he exits in a defiant huff after explicitly expressing his disdain.
Hans Junior represents the latent terror of Hitler’s rhetoric. It is through his character that the reader can appreciate just how devastating the influence of Nazism was. Hitler was a man who was not only setting German hearts against Jews, but also families against families, and sons against fathers. Despite his allegiance to Hitler, Hans Junior falls victim to the fierce violence of the famed Battle of Stalingrad—the bloodiest and most deadly battle of World War II. This ultimately gave the narrator, Death, another soul to take.
